Parasitic fly?

a.ojala

a.ojala

Chalcosoma
Ok, I posted a topic a while back (Dieing L3 lucanus elephus, Jan 19 2013 01:37 PM) , I kept having my wild caught L3's dieing randomly over a one month period. I lost about 5 larvae which where housed in separate containers with what i thought was treated substate. I thought it could have been mites or past injuries that where causing the random deaths. But this morning I woke up to about 7 of these weird flys. I have never seen this specie in my area before and I have no clue what it is. The weird thing is that every larvae that has died, it's container had one of these guys in it. So I believe this was the cause of there death. Has anybody had this happen to them before or can anybody identify the fly for me. Otherwise I'll just take this little guy to class on Wednesday and ID it myself.

Thanks for the help

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Looks to be a Sarcophagid fly or possibly a Tachinid fly. A number of Sarcophagids are parasites of either earthworms or solitary bee and wasp nests made in deadwood. Any chance you could post a larger image. Unlikely to be the cause of death of your larvae.

 
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That is a Tachnid fly in genus Zelia.

I've encountered several of these while I was rearing my wild-caught larvae of L. elapus.

This genus is well known for parasitizing on various species of beetles.

 
Lucanus said:
That is a Tachnid fly in genus Zelia.

I've encountered several of these while I was rearing my wild-caught larvae of L. elapus.

This genus is well known for parasitizing on various species of beetles.
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Not a Tachinid genus we have over here in the UK, and there are no records that I know of UK Lucanus cervus being parasitised by Tachinids. We do have a selection of Tachinids tha parasitise beetle larvae, but these use a range of chafer or leaf beetle species.

 
Matt said:
Not a Tachinid genus we have over here in the UK, and there are no records that I know of UK Lucanus cervus being parasitised by Tachinids. We do have a selection of Tachinids tha parasitise beetle larvae, but these use a range of chafer or leaf beetle species.
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It's quite interesting to hear that their aren't any records of Tachnid flies parasitizing on cervus larvae.

In case you got confused, the species parasitized in the topic is Lucanus elaphus, not L. cervus.

 
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I'd like to hear more, A. Ojala, about the history of your larvae. Did you hatch them from eggs? Were they kept together in a single cage at one time? What did the dead larvae look like at the time you found them? I'd really like to read a write up describing all the details of this phenomenon. Thanks for sharing the photos (and sorry to read of the deaths, but these kinds of posts are very helpful to the rest of us).

 
My friend caught them for me. They looked fine when I received them 3 months ago. They where never stored in the same container as far as I know. The black spots appeared about two weeks before the larvae passed. Also they where collected in north Carolina.

 
a.ojala said:
My friend caught them for me. They looked fine when I received them 3 months ago. They where never stored in the same container as far as I know. The black spots appeared about two weeks before the larvae passed. Also they where collected in north Carolina.
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I would expect the larvae to have be parasitised in the wild before being caught. Still an interesting host record and worth writing a short note just to get it into the literature, verified host records for some Tachinid species are very few and far between.

 
I think that you've already done a fine job of documenting this, unless there is any more info you have. I've taken photos of a larva of this species that I have that is exhibiting signs of this. I am waiting to see if a fly turns up in the container one of these days
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